 Good morning and welcome. We will continue with our study on the prophetic ministry. Let's pray and get started with today's session. I want to request one of us to please lead in prayer. Let's pray. I give this entire class into your hands. Be with us and guide us. Give us good wife and connection throughout the session and let everything we do be done for you in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Jeffina. So we were talking about hearing from God and in the last class I said that we will take some time today to practice hearing from God. So what I'll do is I will take us through chapter nine and then we shall pause. We will pray and give words if there is someone here on the call that they may relate with that particular word. So here in chapter nine, we talk about hearing from the Holy Spirit through our spiritual senses. Now something we must understand is that God has created us spirit, soul and body. So we are a tripartite being as we read in 1st Thessalonians chapter five and verse 23. And the spirit part of us is the eternal part. This is the part that God generally uses for us to hear from Him. Now in scripture, the spirit is generally termed as belly in a most being or sometimes interchangeably as the heart of the man. But it's actually talking about the inner person. It's talking about the spirit of the individual. Sometimes some people may just end up using it to refer to the soul also but in the Bible generally it is about the spirit that this inner man is talking about. The soul part of us, we say that it's the psychological part where we have the mind, the will and the emotions. So in the soul part of us, we already know that we can feel, we can think, we can reason and so on. Now when it comes to the soul part of us, the Bible has so much to say where we must renew our mind, we must not walk with carnal desires or we must not have fleshly lusts in the soul. And we must align it to the purposes of God. In the body, we have senses, the five natural senses that we talk about, we are able to see, we are able to hear, we are able to smell, we are able to taste, we are able to feel, touch. So these are the normal senses of the human body. When it comes to the spirit now, the Bible says that God generally speaks to our spirit. The Holy Spirit reveals truth to our human spirit. God has chosen to lead us and guide us. So the Holy Spirit has a way of communicating with us. We see passages such as John 16 verses 13 through 15, Romans 8 verse 14 which talk about God leading us by His Holy Spirit. How does this communication come? That's the question which we are asking right now. The way God communicates is primarily through our human spirit. Proverbs 20 and verse 27 says that the spirit of a man is a lamp of the Lord and He lights it up. So you can imagine it like a candle. Now what happens is when we light up a candle, you would have light. If you switch off the candle, there's no light. So we can understand this scripture as God communicates to us. So that's like lighting up the candle and there's illumination, there's revelation, there's light. So it's basically just saying that God has chosen the spirit of a man to enlighten. So that's how it works. There are other passages that also talk about the communication of God to the human spirit. Psalm 18 and verse 28 it says, for you will light my lamp, the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. So you see there again, lighting up the lamp is nothing but bringing revelation to the human spirit. And that happens by the Holy Spirit and there is another scripture here. Psalm 42 and verse 7 where we read that deep calls unto deep. So what does God do? God deposits something in the human spirit through His spirit and that is why it says that the deep calls unto deep because in a sense the spirit is the deepest part of us. The spirit is the innermost being. So that's how we understand the way God actually communicates with our spirit. So let's continue from here. We'll talk about the five spirit senses. Just give me one moment. I'll be right. So I'm going to share my screen here that has all the spirit senses and it'll just help us understand things better. I hope you can see it now. All right. Now that you can see it, it's a lot easier to discuss. This might be a different page number in your notes. I'm using the PDF version and this PDF version I downloaded quite a while ago. So there are probably updates to this. But you can go to chapter 9 and you can find this particular pictorial depiction of the spirit senses. So we've been saying that soul seats our mind, will and emotions that we understood. Then the body has the five normal human senses. Even that we understood the body sometimes is called as the outer man and the spirit is called as the inner man. The Holy Spirit communicates with our spirit. He bears witness with our spirit is what Romans 816 says. And the spirit man also has senses and we could even look at these senses as parallel senses. So we mean that when we say that the body can feel the spirit can also feel the body can hear the spirit can also hear. Similarly, every other sense, the sense of seeing, the sense of taste, the sense of smell. So the spirit is able to pick up these things and it is said that maybe the human spirit has many more senses and not just the five senses which we compare with the bodily senses of us. So how do these senses work? We will get into it. But before we get into that, one thing that I want to state is that the human spirit, it picks up the communication of God because it is the lamp of the Lord. We saw that and God lights it up. So the spirit is the lamp of the Lord and he lights it up or he brings communication to the spirit. Now once the communication comes, each of us needs to be able to use the soul part of us to do what? To try to understand what God is saying, you know, try to recognize the meaning of what has been communicated to us then to think that, you know, how should we take this message if it's meant for somebody else and how do I take that message? How do I communicate it in the appropriate way? So all of this will go on within the soul. So for us to say that yeah, when it comes to prophesying, the human spirit is everything and it really doesn't matter, you know, regarding our soul or our body, that wouldn't be true because the spirit, soul and body have to kind of work together. And obviously, you know, once we have determined what action to take, the body has to cooperate and then we have to go ahead and do that. So that's how it generally works. The communication of the Lord comes and we analyze it or here they have, it is written as reason, analyze, determine action and the outer man will do what is required. So now we've understood that the spirit has senses also and it can receive the communication of the Lord. Now, one other thing that we must remember is this particular verse which has been written here. This is one of the more significant scriptures that we will need when we talk about the gift of prophecy. So 1 John chapter 5 and verse 7. Could somebody please read it out aloud for us? 1 John chapter 5 and verse 7. 1 John chapter 5, can I know the verse? Yes. 1 John chapter 5 and verse 7. Verse 7. Yeah. So there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit and these three are one. Okay. So there are three that bear witness, the Father, the, what is the second one? Jeffina? The Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit. The Word and the Holy Spirit. Yeah, the Word and the Holy Spirit. So when you see there, there is the sort of synchrony of the Father and then whether your version, I was just trying to check which version you're reading from because you said the Son. So, but of course you can equate that with the Word of God. So the Son or the Word and the Holy Spirit. Now, in some translations you'll find that the way this has been put together is that the Spirit and the Word, they agree. Okay. So our understanding is that whenever we prophesy, it comes from the Holy Spirit. It comes from the Holy Spirit of God. But then what happens is the Word or the message which the Spirit is bringing to us, it will be in alignment, alignment with what the Word actually says. So thank you, Divya. Divya has posted here from the NIV version and here it says, there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water and the blood. And the three are in agreement. Is this seven or eight, Divya? That must be eight first. Yeah, that must be verse eight. Okay. But anyway, the significance is that the Word and the Spirit are in agreement. So the way this will apply to us is whenever we have a word of prophecy, sometimes people say the Holy Spirit is saying, the Holy Spirit is saying and then they come up with all kinds of messages. Now if that message is not aligned with what the Word says, now yes, we may not have a scripture and a verse exactly to go with the prophecy that we are saying. But within the boundaries of the Word of God, it's not outside the boundary. For example, I gave us an example a few classes ago and I said that there was a prophecy to a married individual saying that, oh, you're married to the wrong person. You should be thinking about getting married to another person because that's the right person God has in mind for you. But we know that a word like that, when you look at the Bible, you look at the understanding of the marriage covenant. Once somebody is in a marriage covenant, how can the Holy Spirit guide you in a way that is in contrast to the written Word of God? So it cannot be a prophecy from the Holy Spirit because it is causing the individual to err and that is against the Word of God. So that would never be something that has been picked up from the Holy Spirit. So this has to be our test always. We hear a word in the soul part of us. The moment we hear a word in the soul part of us, we have to go through the checking process where we say, okay, where is it in the Bible? Is it aligned to the Word of God? If we can clarify that, okay, yes, this is very much aligned to the Word of God. Then we go ahead, we take the action, we might share the word with someone or do whatever is needed. So this is how we would be taking, we would be treating a word of prophecy, okay. So now coming to the different senses and the way the words are picked up. Here is a summary, we will kind of go through it again. When you talk about the feel, there are examples such as, you know, Paul states that I am stirred in my spirit or, you know, he says I am pressed in my spirit. So in this spirit, there are all these feelings and each of these feelings means something. Just the way in our natural senses, you know, our soul part when we say, hey, I am feeling joyful, I am feeling happy, it means something. So similarly, in this spirit, God can give us feelings and those feelings can be an indication of what God wants us to do. Now coming to the sight part, there are different, you know, with the perception of sight, we can pick up different forms of communication. There can be still images, which we call as pictures or there can be, you know, more like a video sort of an image, motion picture. Where you can see an entire incident taking place. So that would be either a dream. A dream is what you would see when one is sleeping or it can be a vision. We use the term vision for generally, you know, a time when somebody is not sleeping and yet they are picking up some such, you know, communication from God. There can be a trance. A trance is when the body loses its strength and the person is actually receiving a vision. So that is known as a trance. There are even other experiences such as out of body, seeing the spirit realm. So the spirit man can see. Then we have hearing, the sense of hearing and we have talked about it earlier. We said that one can pick up maybe a word or sometimes even a sentence. We could pick up more. Remember, we said like a download of information with people have said that they've written entire books, you know, with that kind of information that has come into their spirit. And generally there is no audible voice associated with the hearing. It's usually, maybe it comes in like a visual, like a word which is written. But then, you know, we know that it's actually the sense of hearing sometimes one can hear it audibly. Okay, so that's how these senses are described. We can go back and we can talk more about the other senses a little later. So just moment I'll, you know, rotate this page and come back to you. Alright, I hope that was helpful. Now we will continue to talk about these senses a little more elaborately. But at this point, are there any thoughts or anything that you wanted to check about right away? Of course, we'll discuss more in detail soon. Oh, okay, trans. Okay, so trans. The passage is acts chapter 10, maybe. Yeah, yes. So we are here in acts chapter 10. And verse, yes, verse 10 acts 10 verse 10. I'll just post it here. They're not chat for you. Yes. So there is the passage. It says when he became very hungry and wanted to eat. But while they made ready, he fell into a trance. A trance is a state as I told us that the body is kind of, you know, weak in those moments, weak or you could say that one is having such a spiritual connect with the spiritual realm that the senses of the body, the strength of the body seems to have been, you know, a weekend. Temporarily. So that's the experience which Peter had. So you can imagine this as something like, you know, he may have, he may have become, it may look like he's unconscious. Okay. But what's happening is spiritually, there is activity going on that he's able to perceive and in this case, he perceives a vision from God. Where he sees all kinds of animals brought down to him and then God is telling him rise, Peter, kill and eat. The significance of which is that he must not discriminate against the Gentiles. If God has accepted, you know, now God is telling him, look, you can accept all animals. This was in contrast to what was spoken to them earlier in the, you know, the food laws which were given to the children of Israel. And so God was implying the way I'm telling you to accept all animals. I'm telling you that you can accept all communities, even the Gentiles. And then it leads to Peter actually going and ministering to a Gentile centurion known as Cornelius. So that's how it works, Divya. Trans is when your body seems weakened, but there is significant spiritual activity. Is that okay? So when one is seeing a vision, the bodily functions are normal, you could say, like, you know, strength wise. Sure, sure. So, so does it mean like in a vision or a dream, like the senses that are involved as my sight or, you know, seeing, but in a trans, it's like everything is every other part, like of the spirit, like other senses of the spirit are involved? Not like that, Divya. See, for example, if you take a contrast between trans and vision, in a vision, the bodily senses or the way the functions of the body may remain normal. For example, I could be walking on the street and I receive a vision. I could be worshipping the Lord and I receive a vision. Okay. But what about my physical abilities? I'm still standing, I'm still walking or whatever I'm doing. You know, I could be writing, I could be typing on my computer and see a vision. So nothing has happened to my physical abilities. But in case of a trans, it's like the person, you might see that the person looks almost unconscious. You got it. The physical abilities are gone momentarily. Okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah. It's like that. So is it, is it only recorded portion in the Bible regarding a trans? Is it only, yeah. And even in the PDF, I saw Act 10. Are there any other, do we know? I can think of the first one that I can think of is Adam. When, you know, God put him to sleep, it says, so he must have been in a trans like state is my guess. Okay. So yeah. The other ones, can anyone think of other trans is Ezekiel? Did they have any trans? Okay. Right away, I'm not able to recall Divya, but I'll let you know. Sure. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So that's our trans is compared to. Maybe a vision or some other communication. So let's get into each one, one by one. So when it comes to the sense of feeling, as I already shared, there can be a certain feeling indicative of what God wants us to do. So I might have a positive feeling or a negative feeling. The positive could be, you know, we are making some decisions in the ministry or for the family and we have a sense of joy. We have a sense of quietness, a sense of peace in our spirits. Notice there is a difference. This is in the spirit, not so much in the emotions, but sometimes it's hard to tell where that boundary is. So we may not know, hey, am I feeling this in my spirit? Am I feeling this in my emotions? But, you know, we can take some time. We can check it out and then we will be able to tell the spirit feeling can also sort of, you know, overflow into our emotions. But we must understand what's happening in the spirit. Or that sense of feeling in the spirit because we may be making a decision on the basis of that. So a positive emotion can be picked up in the spirit where one feels a sense of peace or a sense of rest, quietness, joy and all of that. Or there can be a negative sense. What is that? A negative sense can be some discomfort, some uneasiness or restlessness in the spirit. Or we might feel the way Paul said, right? He said, like, I was provoked in my spirit when he saw idols in Athens. He was really angry that, oh, people don't know about God over here. This is the way in which God was guiding him and leading him and showing him where he must minister. So we can pick it up, either a positive one or a negative one. So when we know how to identify, that will then stir us to action. So there are examples given here in our notes. Peace where Colossians 3.15 says, and let the peace of God rule and reign in your hearts. Remember, I mentioned that earlier. The term heart is sometimes interchangeably used for the inner person or the spirit of a person. So let the peace of God rule and reign stirred, provoked in the spirit. We said that Paul had that experience compelled by the spirit. So he felt that God wanted him to go to a certain region and he testifies of that, bound in the spirit. When he was moving towards Jerusalem, he knew that he will be imprisoned. So it's a very uncomfortable feeling which he had and he describes it as, I felt bound in the spirit. So the Holy Spirit was speaking to him in all these ways. Ezekiel shares his experiences where he says that I had bitterness. Like he felt that sense of bitterness in his spirit or other things. So just to let us know that we can pick up all of these emotions but feelings in our spirit man. Then the spirit sense of seeing and I've already described that to us. So obviously this is a spirit sense of seeing. Can our natural eye also perceive? It may or may not perceive. Like in the case of Elisha. He tells his servant, you go up on the mountain and you see. So the first time he's not seeing anything. But like the second time when he goes, he's able to see the armies of God which are there to back up. You know Elisha and his team. So how does he perceive it? Through his natural eyes. So when we pick up information from God through the sense of seeing, it can happen with or without our natural eyes. It can happen with or without our natural eyes. We need to know that. Now talking more about the sense of seeing. Remember Jesus so many times he said like he who has ears let him hear. He who has eyes let him see. So the people who heard Jesus could have marveled and wondered. What is he talking about? We all have eyes. Why does he say, you know, if you have eyes to perceive? Well, he was referring to the spirit eyes and saying that a human being can perceive with their natural eyesight. But there is something that God wants them to perceive with the spiritual eyes. So through the spirit eyes, one can pick up as I stated pictures, visions, you know, and different communication from God. So pictures like there are examples given here. Jeremiah, God asked him, you know, what do you see? So Jeremiah chapter one was 11th through 14th. He says, I see a branch of an almond tree. So you see that one picture, but that picture, you know, as we say a picture speaks a thousand words through that. God was telling him and getting ready to perform my word. And again, God asked him, what do you see? And Jeremiah said, I see a boiling pot facing away from the north. And God gave him the meaning of that and said out of the north calamity shall break forth on all the inhabitants of the land. So God is speaking through pictures. Even Prophet Amos, God asked him, OK, Amos, what do you see? And he said, OK, God in Amos chapter eight verses one and two, I see a basket of summer fruit. So God was giving him a message through that. What is the message? Messages, the end has come upon my people Israel. I will not pass by them anymore. So notice there is a picture and the picture has a meaning which God wants to communicate. So even now when we pray for someone, we might see a picture. But that picture needs an interpretation. Or we must understand its meaning as to what God is actually wanting to say. Now dreams, classic example is remember Pharaoh, he had dreams. Joseph was a wonderful dream interpreter. So he interpreted Pharaoh's dreams. He interpreted the dreams of his co-prisoners. He was going about interpreting dreams. And God in his word on Job 33, we have seen this passage earlier. He said that when a man sleeps, that God gives a dream, a vision of the night. And why is this? Because he wants to steal some information or instruction into one's being. So that's what dreams do. Dreams also bring a communication from God. But dreams are, some people also called dreams as visions of the night. Or they also call dreams as shut-eye visions. Or in other words, dream is a vision but it happens when a person sleeps basically. Because they are seeing things happen but when they are asleep. So that is a dream. When you are awake and you are watching some communication from God, that's known as vision. That's the simple difference between dream and vision. So vision, what is a vision? People like Daniel, he had so many visions. He had the end time visions. When you read the visions, it's amazing. There are kings in it and there is pictures of kingdoms and nations. And each one has some interpretation and meaning to it. And so God was trying to communicate with them. What about somebody like Apostle John? When you read the book of Revelation, it's full of visions. So John did not even interpret some of what is there. So he has given it to us in pictorial language. When he says he sees Jesus, his hair is like wool, his eyes are like fire. So he's explaining the pictures that he has got. And the end times, he sees locusts flying, the attacks coming on nations, pictorial language. He just used the language he knew to describe the vision which he saw. And so like that, there are many visions. We just talked about the trance which Peter had. In that also, he sees a vision. He sees animals come down. And of course, God gave him the sense of what it meant a bit later on. So these are the ways in which God communicates. We might see a vision which then needs to be interpreted. Okay, then seeing in the spirit realm. Seeing in the spirit realm, remember, we started off with Balam about how he fell to the ground. His eyes were opened. He got the knowledge of the Lord. So Balam also is an individual where we see that the Lord opened Balam's eyes, it says. So seeing into the spirit realm is possible as our spirit sense of seeing is opened up and we can perceive. And I gave you the example of Elisha's servant. He also sees into the spirit realm. So there are two realities. There's the spiritual reality, the natural reality. And the servant sees the spiritual reality. The unique thing here is through his natural eyes. So his natural eyes get the ability to look into the spiritual realm. Even that can happen. Okay, again, somebody who perceived in the spiritual realm is Isaiah. You know, Isaiah, how he saw the throne of God. The Lord was sitting on his throne and his robe filled the temple. So he describes that entire vision. And, you know, that's another example. Out of body, we said that, isn't it? So out of body, Ezekiel is a good example. Where Ezekiel, he says that the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley and it was full of bones. So it's as if Ezekiel was brought to a certain place where while he's actually at another place. So in this spirit, it almost felt like, you know, he is going from one place to the other and perceiving different things that are happening in another geographical location. So Ezekiel shares experiences like that. All right. And there's one more passage in the book of Corinthians where, you know, you see that Paul states that somebody had this experience, you know, whether in the body or in the body, I do not know whether out of the body I do not know such a one was caught up to the third heaven. So that also see even Paul is affirming that there are two possibilities that people may physically be able to go some place because of a supernatural phenomenon or the spirit can kind of have an out of body experience. And so these things happen and we shouldn't consider them as abnormal. So I'll just come here to our chat section. Rosalind shared Apostle John in Revelation. Yeah, so the trans experience. Paul, Brother Paul is asking what about traveling. So traveling, Brother John is Paul is an intense form of prayer. Okay, now it may be accompanied with visions or may not be accompanied with visions, but it is an intense form of seeking the Lord. It's an intense form of prayer. That's what revealing is. Coming to what Divya is saying, there is another trans recorded in Acts 22. When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance. Okay, yeah, Divya, that's right. It says that and saw the Lord speaking to me quick. He said, leave Jerusalem immediately because the people here will not accept your testimony about me. Okay, thank you. So there's another example of trance. So so far we have discussed about the sense of feeling and the sense of seeing. So would anyone like to talk more about it? In the next session, we'll go on to hearing and other senses. Okay, so in that case, I understand that, you know, you have you got the essence of what I'm saying. So then let me just touch upon the spirit sense of hearing. Going back to what Jesus said, he who has yours, let him hear, you know, and then even Revelation 27, he who has and your let him hear what the spirit says to the churches. So it's talking about the spirit man and the ability to hear the spirit. Now, I've shared that when we hear from God, we may have this idea that we will hear a voice, but it usually doesn't happen like that. Some examples, of course, are there like Samuel when God said Samuel, Samuel, and he heard a voice. But in most other instances, we may pick up words in our spirit. So something like, you know, when we are praying, we may see the word comfort, you know, which now in the in prophecy you would see that God has a certain way of communicating. You might perceive it in your spirit, or you might see that word maybe appearing before their face or appearing on top of their head or something like that. But you get the point that God is saying there is something related to comfort that needs to be addressed to a particular individual. So that's how we pick up the word. We may see the word comfort, or we may sense the word comfort in our spirit, or it can be a sentence. If you recall, when, you know, Philip, he was going and doing his ministry in Acts chapter 8, the spirit said to Philip, Acts 829, a sentence comes into Philip's spirit. And that sentence is go near and overtake this chariot. It's not like he heard a voice telling him that sentence, but in his spirit he perceived, okay, do this an entire sentence. And then he went and he found the Ethiopian eunuch and he was able to share more about, he was able to explain about Jesus when that person was reading a passage from Isaiah. Now, that is one sentence, but we can have more sentences also come into our spirit. So in Acts 10, 19 and 20, remember the time when Peter saw that vision in the trance? God gave him a couple of sentences. So the spirit said to him in Acts 10, verses 19 and 20, behold, three men are seeking you. I rise therefore, go down and go with them, doubting nothing for I have sent them. So this much the Holy Spirit spoke to Peter to encourage him to go. And the next thing that happened is that he was able to minister to Cornelius and his household. So what we'll do right now is we will take a break. We will come back at 10am and we will continue. I see a question in the chat Divya will address it right after our break. So thank you everyone, please stay on the same call. I'll just stop the recording and I'll see you on the other side of the break. Thank you.